"Det hjälper inte någon annan att man går sönder, man måste vara snäll mot sig själv också" - En kvalitativ studie om skolkuratorers beskrivningar av känslor, känslohantering och dess konsekvenser

Sammanfattning: The aim of this study was to increase the knowledge of how school counselors describe what emotions can emerge while interacting with students, how they deal with their emotions when they emerge and the consequences of their emotion regulation. The study is based on semi-structured interviews with eight school counselors in Sweden who have had at least one six-month employment at a school. In our analysis, we used Hoschchilds theory of emotional labor and Lazarus and Folkman's theory of coping. The result of the study shows that the school counselors describe varied experiences of emotions, which, however, can be thematized according to "empathy, inadequacy and stress", "responsibility and expectations'', "loneliness and uncertainty" and "joy and meaningfulness". Furthermore, our results show that all respondents have strategies for managing emotions. Our empirical evidence shows that strategies in the form of experience, boundary setting, role clarification, recovery, own interests, reflection as well as supervision, and organization are the most central strategies for emotional management. Lastly, our results show that the consequences of the design of emotional management are tangible both in work life and private life and that these are dependent on strategies.